Role of Trust in E-Government Projects

Abstract

Trust forms an important part of the discourse on e-Government. E-Government adoption involves trust relationships amongst three important entities: government (provider of the system), citizens (end users of the system) and the enabling technology, forming a trust triad. An important link in this trust triad that has not been studied much in the literature on e-Government is the role of the trust reposed by the government in the citizens. This relationship has enormous potential to simplify the control mechanisms used in e-Government transactions. This in turn significantly enhances citizens’ perceived usefulness of the system. Hence, trust in citizens by the government is expected to eventually lead to higher adoption of the concerned e-Government system and its continued use. Development of this trust is facilitated by acquiring information processing capability. This paper seeks to explore the issue of government trust in citizens using the case study methodology. The Profession Tax Digitization project in West Bengal, India, has been used as a case to demonstrate a trust-based e-Government system. At the heart of the implementation approach of this project lies the belief that people are essentially not tax-evaders and that lack of compliance is more because of the cumbersome process of tax payment. This belief defines the focus of change in the system, viz., process simplification based on the trust in taxpayers. In this paper, we identify potential causes of disruption of the government’s trust in citizens and mechanisms of production of trust in the same context. We emphasize the role of information processing capability in the production of the government’s trust in the citizens. Further, we demonstrate that production of trust results in an opportunity for trust-based governance leading to higher adoption of e-Government projects through simplification in government processes.